Facebook’s Promoted posts | How Do They Work And When Should I Use Them?

Facebook’s Promoted Posts Are a Great Way to Get in Front of More Fans

I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical when Facebook first introduced Promoted Posts. Paying for your fans to see you? Blah, right? But, this was before I realized how truly genius this product is.

First and foremost I think it’s important to state that Facebook hasn’t done anything to change the way that your posts get posted to your fans news feeds.

Because there is so much content created in Facebook in a day, there is just not enough room in Facebook’s news feed for every post that is created. So, in order to give the Facebook user the best experience possible on Facebook, they use an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine which posts should be placed in the news feed of your fans.

However, there are times when you either have an important announcement or time sensitive information about a sale, or event and you want or need to get in front of as many of those fans as you possibly can. Here is where Promoted posts are used best.

So, what is a Promoted post? A promoted post is simply a status update or post on your Facebook page that gets served to more of your fans newsfeeds by paying a small amount of money. It’s a way to ensure you get into the newsfeed of those who have already liked your page. Once created the promoted post will show up in your fans news feed just like a regular post, except it says in small grey letters at the bottom of the post “sponsored.”

The more interaction or engagement you can conjure up with your promoted post the better. If your fans engage with the promoted post it will then also be seen by your fans’ friends. So, the more comments, likes and shares you can get, the better. Just like with a regular post, this is going to increase your engagement and your Edgerank score. This means you need to make sure that the content you’re promoting is strong enough to stimulate engagement.

Say you want to promote a particular event. Instead of simply creating a post that says “register for this event” and then promoting the post, create a more engaging post. For example, you can create a promoted post that says “Thumbs Up if you want to win a Free Ticket to the Agents of Change Conference!”, not only are you promoting the upcoming event, but you are also asking them to take action in a very simple way. And, the best part about this is that it doesn’t end there.

Now, because this is a promoted post most of your fans, not just the small percent that usually do, are going to see this post. Which means you have a better chance at getting more likes. As soon as that particular fan gives you that thumbs up, you now are going to be able to be seen in their friends news feed as well.

Because this post is getting more engagement it will improve your Edgerank score, especially with those who hit like. So, these folks that engaged with the promoted post, who before were not seeing your posts, are now going to see them as in the future as well.

We’ve seen this work with our promoted posts. There is a definite upswing in reach after you run a promoted post campaign. You’ll notice that for the next few days and posts that they also are being seen by more fans giving you an increased reach.

We recommend using these posts to not only promote something of importance that’s going on, but to also use it to build your Edgerank score right before you have a few important things that you want to reach your fans with.

Have you been using Promoted posts? How have they been working for you?